I haven’t kept anything like an accurate score, but I would say that over the years I haven’t told the cops more than a couple of dozen barefaced lies, maybe not that many. They are seldom practical. On the other hand, I can’t recall any murder case Wolfe and I were in on and I’ve had my story gone into at length where I have simply opened the bag and given them all I had, with no dodging and no withholding, except one, and this is it. On the murder of Adrian Getz I didn’t have a single thing on my mind that I wasn’t willing and eager to shovel out, so I let them have it.
It worked fine. They called me a liar.
Not right away, of course. At first even Inspector Cramer appreciated my cooperation, knowing as he did that there wasn’t a man in his army who could shade me at seeing and hearing, remembering, and reporting. It was generously conceded that upon finding the body I had performed properly and promptly, herding the trio into the room and keeping the Kovens from holding a family council until the law arrived. From there on, of course, everyone had been under surveillance, including me.
At six-thirty, when the scientists were still monopolizing the room where Getz had got it, and city employees were wandering all over the place, and the various inmates were still in various rooms conversing privately with Homicide men, and I had typed and signed my own frank and full statement, I was confidently expecting that I would soon be out on the sidewalk unattended, flagging a taxi. I was in the front room on the ground floor, seated at Pat Lowell’s desk, having used her typewriter, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins was sitting across from me, looking over my statement.
He lifted his head and regarded me, perfectly friendly. A perfectly friendly look from Stebbins would, from almost anyone else, cause you to get your guard up and be ready to either duck or counter, but Purley wasn’t responsible for the design of his big bony face and his pig-bristle eyebrows.
“I guess you got it all in,” he admitted. “As you told it.”
“I suggest,” I said modestly, “that when this case is put away you send that to the school to be used as a model report.”
“Yeah.” He stood up. “You’re a good typist.” He turned to go.
I arose too, saying casually, “I can run along now?”
The door opened, and Inspector Cramer entered. I didn’t like his expression as he darted a glance at me. Knowing him well in all his moods, I didn’t like the way his broad shoulders were hunched, or his clamped jaw, or the glint in his eye.
“Here’s Goodwin’s statement,” Purley said. “Okay.”
“As he told it?”
“Yes.”
“Send him downtown and hold him.”
It caught me completely off balance. “Hold me?” I demanded, squeaking almost like Hildebrand.
“Yes, sir.” Nothing could catch Purley off balance. “On your order?”
“No, charge him. Sullivan Act. He has no license for the gun we found on him.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Ha, ha, and ha, ha. There, you got your laugh. A very fine gag. Ha.”
“You’re going down, Goodwin. I’ll be down to see you later.”
As I said, I knew him well. He meant it. I had his eyes. “This,” I said, “is way out of my reach. I’ve told you where and how and why I got that gun.” I pointed to the paper in Purley’s hand. “Read it. It’s all down, punctuated.”
“You had the gun in your holster and you have no license for it.”
“Nuts. But I get it. You’ve been hoping for years to hang something on Nero Wolfe, and to you I’m just a part of him, and you think here’s your chance. Of course it won’t stick. Wouldn’t you rather have something that will? Like resisting arrest and assaulting an officer? Glad to oblige. Watch it—”
Tipping forward, I started a left hook for his jaw, fast and vicious, then jerked it down and went back on my heels. It didn’t create a panic, but I had the satisfaction of seeing Cramer take a quick step back and Stebbins one forward. They bumped.
“There,” I said. “With both of you to swear to it, that ought to be good for at least two years. I’ll throw the typewriter at you if you’ll promise to catch it.”
“Cut the clowning,” Purley growled.
“You lied about that gun,” Cramer snapped. “If you don’t want to get taken down to think it over, think now. Tell me what you came here for and what happened.”
“I’ve told you.”
“A string of lies.”
“No, sir.”
“You can have ’em back. I’m not trying to hang something on Wolfe, or you either. I want to know why you came here and what happened.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I moved my eyes. “Okay, Purley, where’s my escort?”
Cramer strode four paces to the door, opened it, and called, “Bring Mr. Koven in here!”
Harry Koven entered with a dick at his elbow. He looked as if he was even farther away from happiness than before.
“We’ll sit down,” Cramer said.
He left me behind the desk. Purley and the dick took chairs in the background. Cramer stationed himself across the desk from me, where Purley had been, with Koven on a chair at his left. He opened up.
“I told you, Mr. Koven, that I would ask you to repeat your story in Goodwin’s presence, and you said you would.”
Koven nodded. “That’s right.” He was hoarse.
“We won’t need all the details. Just answer me briefly. When you called on Nero Wolfe last Saturday evening, what did you ask him to do?”
“I told him I was going to have Dazzle Dan start a detective agency in a new series.” The hoarseness bothered Koven, and he cleared his throat explosively. “I told him I needed technical assistance, and possibly a tie-up, if we could arrange—”
There was a pad of ruled paper on the desk. I reached for it, and a pencil, and started doing shorthand. Cramer leaned over, stretched an arm, grabbed a corner of the pad, and jerked it away. I could feel the blood coming to my head, which was silly of it with an inspector, a sergeant, and a private all in the room.
“We need your full attention,” Cramer growled. He went to Koven. “Did you say anything to Wolfe about your gun being taken from your desk?”
“Certainly not. It hadn’t been taken. I did mention that I had a gun in my desk for which I had no license, but that I never carried it, and I asked if that was risky. I told them what make it was, a Marley thirty-two. I asked how much trouble it would be to get a license, and if—”
“We’ll keep it brief. Just cover the points. What arrangement did you make with Wolfe?”
“He agreed to send Goodwin to my place on Monday for a conference with my staff and me.”
“About what?”
“About the technical problems of having Dazzle Dan do detective work, and possibly a tie-up.”
“And Goodwin came?”
“Yes, today around noon.” Koven’s hoarseness kept interfering with him, and he kept clearing his throat. My eyes were at his face, but he hadn’t met them. Of course he was talking to Cramer and had to be polite. He went on, “The conference was for twelve-thirty, but I had a little talk with Goodwin and asked him to wait. I have to be careful what I do with Dan and I wanted to think it over some more. Anyway I’m like that, I put things off. It was after four o’clock when he—”
“Was your talk with Goodwin about your gun being gone?”
“Certainly not. We might have mentioned the gun, about my not having a license for it, I don’t remember — no, wait a minute, we must have, because I pulled the drawer open and we glanced in at it. Except for that, we only talked—”
“Did you or Goodwin take your gun out of the drawer?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Did he put his gun in the drawer?”
“Absolutely not.”
I slid in, “When I took my gun from my holster to show it to you, did you—”
“Nothing doing,” Cramer snapped at me. “You’re listening. Just the high spots for now.” He returned to Koven. “Did you have another talk with Goodwin later?”
Koven nodded. “Yes, around half-past three he came up to my room — the living room. We talked until after four, there and in my office, and then—”
“In your office did Goodwin open the drawer of the desk and take the gun out and say it had been changed?”
“Certainly not!”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing, only we talked, and then he left to go down and get the others to come up for the conference. After a while he came back alone, and without saying anything he came to the desk and took my gun from the drawer and put it under his coat. Then he went to the phone and called Nero Wolfe. When I heard him tell Wolfe that Adrian Getz had been shot, that he was on a couch downstairs dead, I got up to go down there, and Goodwin jumped me from behind and knocked me out. When I came to he was still talking to Wolfe, I don’t know what he was telling him, and then he called the police. He wouldn’t let me—”
“Hold it,” Cramer said curtly. “That covers that. One more point. Do you know of any motive for Goodwin’s wanting to murder Adrian Getz?”
“No, I don’t. I told—”
“Then if Getz was shot with Goodwin’s gun how would you account for it? You’re not obliged to account for it, but if you don’t mind just repeat what you told me.”
“Well—” Koven hesitated. He cleared his throat for the twentieth time. “I told you about the monkey. Goodwin opened a window, and that’s enough to kill that kind of a monkey, and Getz was very fond of it. He didn’t show how upset he was but Getz was very quiet and didn’t show things much. I understand Goodwin likes to kid people. Of course I don’t know what happened, but if Goodwin went in there later when Getz was there, and started to open a window, you can’t tell. When Getz once got aroused he was apt to do anything. He couldn’t have hurt Goodwin any, but Goodwin might have got out his gun just for a gag, and Getz tried to take it away, and it went off accidentally. That wouldn’t be murder, would it?”
“No,” Cramer said, “that would only be a regrettable accident. That’s all for now, Mr. Koven. Take him out, Sol, and bring Hildebrand.”
As Koven arose and the dick came forward I reached for the phone on Pat Lowell’s desk. My hand got there, but so did Cramer’s, hard on top of mine.
“The lines here are busy,” he stated. “There’ll be a phone you can use downtown. Do you want to hear Hildebrand before you comment?”
“I’m crazy to hear Hildebrand,” I assured him. “No doubt he’ll explain that I tossed the gun in the monkey’s cage to frame the monkey. Let’s just wait for Hildebrand.”
It wasn’t much of a wait; the Homicide boys are snappy. Byram Hildebrand, ushered in by Sol, stood and gave me a long straight look before he took the chair Koven had vacated. He still had good presence, with his fine mat of nearly white hair, but his extremities were nervous. When he sat he couldn’t find comfortable spots for either his hands or his feet.
“This will only take a minute,” Cramer told him. “I just want to check on Sunday morning. Yesterday. You were here working?”
Hildebrand nodded, and the squeak came. “I was putting on some touches. I often work Sundays.”
“You were in there in the workroom?”
“Yes. Mr. Getz was there, making some suggestions. I was doubtful about one of his suggestions and went upstairs to consult Mr. Koven, but Mrs. Koven was there in the hall and—”
“You mean the big hall one flight up?”
“Yes. She said Mr. Koven wasn’t up yet and Miss Lowell was in his office waiting to see him. Miss Lowell has extremely good judgment, and I went up to consult her. She disapproved of Mr. Getz’s suggestion, and we discussed various matters, and mention was made of the gun Mr. Koven kept in his desk drawer. I pulled the drawer open just to look at it, with no special purpose, merely to look at it, and closed the drawer again. Shortly afterward I returned downstairs.”
“Was the gun there in the drawer?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take it out?”
“No. Neither did Miss Lowell. We didn’t touch it.”
“But you recognized it as the same gun?”
“I can’t say that I did, no. I had never examined the gun, never had it in my hand. I can only say that it looked the same as before. It was my opinion that our concern about the gun being kept there was quite childish, but I see now that I was wrong. After what happened today—”
“Yeah.” Cramer cut him off. “Concern about a loaded gun is never childish. That’s all I’m after now. Sunday morning, in Miss Lowell’s presence, you opened the drawer of Koven’s desk and saw the gun which you took to be the gun you had seen there before. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct,” Hildebrand squeaked.
“Okay, that’s all.” Cramer nodded at Sol. “Take him back to Rowcliff.”
I treated myself to a good deep breath. Purley was squinting at me, not gloating, just concentrating. Cramer turned his head to see that the door was closed after the dick and the artist and then turned back to me.
“Your turn,” he growled.
I shook my head. “Lost my voice,” I whispered, hissing.
“You’re not funny, Goodwin. You’re never as funny as you think you are. This time you’re not funny at all. You can have five minutes to go over it and realize how complicated it is. When you phoned Wolfe before you phoned us, you couldn’t possibly have arranged all the details. I’ve got you. I’ll be leaving here before long to join you downtown, and on my way I’ll stop in at Wolfe’s place for a talk. He won’t clam up on this one. At the very least I’ve got you good on the Sullivan Act. Want five minutes?”
“No, sir.” I was calm but emphatic. “I want five days and I would advise you to take a full week. Complicated doesn’t begin to describe it. Before I leave for downtown, if you’re actually going to crawl out on that one, I wish to remind you of something, and don’t forget it. When I voluntarily took Koven’s gun from my holster and turned it over — it wasn’t ‘found on me,’ as you put it — I also turned over six nice clean cartridges which I had in my vest pocket, having previously removed them from my gun. I hope none of your heroes gets careless and mixes them up with the cartridges found in my gun, if any, when you retrieved it from the monkey. That would be a mistake. The point is, if I removed the cartridges from my gun in order to insert one or more from Koven’s gun, when and why did I do it? There’s a day’s work for you right there. And if I did do it, then Koven’s friendly effort to fix me up for justifiable manslaughter is wasted, much as I appreciate it, because I must have been premeditating something, and you know what. Why fiddle around with the Sullivan Act? Make it the big one, and I can’t get bail. Now I button up.”
I set my jaw.
Cramer eyed me. “Even a suspended sentence,” he said, “you lose your license.”
I grinned at him.
“You goddam mule,” Purley rumbled.
I included him in the grin.
“Send him down,” Cramer rasped and got up and left.